The magazine industry has experienced a steady growth over the last few years. This industry has used different ways to advertise magazines, and has also provided different methods for people to subscribe to and receive magazines. Some of the advertising has included direct marketing via the mail and over the telephone, commercials on television and radio, print advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and online advertisements via the Internet. Consumers may subscribe to magazines through the mail, over the phone, and over the Internet. Frequently, however, a long subscription period, such as one year, is required for each subscription. Consumers may feel locked into receiving the magazine for the duration of the subscription period. Even worse, consumers cannot easily cancel their magazine subscriptions or determine when a subscription will expire, and may have to wait on hold with telephone consumer service representatives to cancel their subscriptions, or even to check the status of their subscriptions.
These commitments, coupled with rising costs of subscriptions, cause difficulty for consumers, especially for consumers with multiple subscriptions. Further, while some magazines accept subscriptions via online services, conventional online magazine subscription services suffer from several disadvantages. For example, each magazine subscription generally requires a consumer to manage each individual subscription, and to keep track of different subscription durations, contract terms, bills, contacts, and renewal notices. These conventional systems may be particularly cumbersome for individuals and households that subscribe to multiple magazines. Further, generic services operated by offline, third-party magazine agents have no brand recognition, and, therefore, are not easily trusted by consumers.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a flexible magazine management service that will enable users to consolidate multiple subscriptions from different publishers into one account, and to pay for a magazine package with a recurring flat fee.